"Hello, Ball!"
Posted on 01/13/2019 6:34:45 AM PST by dennisw
When Mitch Steller first moved into his house on a lush 117-acre golf course in Southern California, “this was like the Garden of Eden, having a golf course in my backyard,” he said.
Today, his Poway, Calif., home overlooks dry, dead grass in place of a once-verdant fairway. The golf club closed in 2017. “The fairways are brown, the greens are gone, the buildings are being vandalized,” says Mr. Steller, a 70-year-old maritime-management consultant.
Forty years after developers started blanketing the Sunbelt with housing developments built around golf, many courses are closing amid a decline in golf participation, leaving homeowners to grapple with the consequences. People often believe a course will bolster their property values. But many are discovering the opposite can now be true—and legal disputes are erupting as communities fight over how to handle the struggling courses.
“There are hundreds of other communities in this situation, and they’re trapped and they don’t know what to do,” says Peter Nanula, chief executive of Concert Golf Partners, a golf club owner-operator that owns about 20 private clubs across the U.S. One of his current projects is the rehabilitation of a recently acquired club in Florida that had shut one of its three golf courses and sued residents who had stopped paying membership fees.
(Excerpt) Read more at outline.com ...
Lived adjacent to a golf course at one point in Texas. Non-HOA. One of the “amenities” was every week when they mowed the fairways it drove all the snakes into our area.
We actually found a couple of homeless camped behind the 300-yd berms one morning.
That was the type of homeless camp I was thinking of (/s).
“Put” means hole.”
Lots of assputs on big city golf courses.
Then you have no objection to what goes on in public on San Francisco streets?
No one was more surprised by the results of my efforts than me. I am not a great speaker or flyer author. But the entire trajectory of local development was altered by a one page informational flyer produced by an amateur and a few hours of face to face visits.
When we moved here Covington was a beautiful little bedroom community which was not incorporated. There were two grocery stores and some fast food places. Now Covington is a filthy mess collecting massive amounts of tax dollars with over a hundred non-productive city workers and hoards of low income apartments and associated riff-raff. It has the highest concentration of Muslims and new immigrants of any place in Washington. Our once pristine roads are constantly littered with trash from people who come from places where this is the accepted way to get rid of garbage.
I never understood why anyone would want a house on a golf course, having to worry about golf balls hitting the house, or having to worry about getting hit with a golf ball in the backyard.
Golf is a good walk, spoiled.
It all depends upon management.
I live on a 27 hole private country club in Alabama. Our membership declined when the economy went into the tank in 2008/2009. We’ve partially reversed that decline with new and younger membership by offering things that appeal to that group.
For example, our golf pro offers group lessons to kids. He has week long playing lessons and seminars for kids. We had over 100 new members last year and most of them middle aged with middle school high school children. We haven’t fully recovered but things have greatly improved. If you can ‘get the kid’s, you will keep the adults.
I bought this house in 2012. It’s increased about 10% in value. I have had one broken window. No big deal. My window warranty fixed. I do get a few balls in the yard but that only decreases how much I have to spend on new balls.
We do occasionally have water issues. The last drought brought questions as to why we watered our course when folks couldn’t wash their cars. When it was explained that our course owned our own wells and the water wasn’t treated for home use the questions ceased.
The Section Eight Housing issues are the result of the Obama Administration requiring communities to distribute section eight housing across their area. The Trump administration has stopped that.
“What about collective ownership of a company by those who are stock holders?”
If a golf course were run like a corporation that charged for it’s product/service, had to make a profit, had shareholders who could easily buy and sell shares on an exchange which established price discovery at any point of the trading day and which transferred profits to the shareholders in the form of dividends, with audit requirements and severe penalties for fraud......then maybe collective ownership of a golf course would not closely resemble socialism with it’s well-established track record of lack of success.
A hole in one!
I did a small amount of basically corporate-challenge golf and such.
We also went to an IBM event. So we did a four-man scramble, which was always my best option. One of our four “men” was a woman - she told me what I was doing wrong and she was correct.
The point here was there was a driving range kinda on the way home for work. I’d put my clubs in my evil SUV and go after work and hit a bucket of balls or two in the time leading up to this. Nice little range, reasonable.
Well, that was about 2004. Before things really took a major downturn for me. I drove past the place a few months ago in the daytime (not often there anymore). It’s overgrown with weeds, basically looks abandoned.
I hated to see what had happened to it.
If it wasn’t for a Golf Course, Harrison Ford wouldn’t have a place to crash land his Airplane.
A Friends Son In-law bought a Golf Course in Texas with some Business Partners.
Six Months later and Oil Company contacted them wanting to drill on the Property. He and his partners are making a fortune.
The Rigs are set up to slant drill from piece of Land next door so the Golf Course wouldn’t be affected.
[while making water a sacred commodity and the recipe for vacant courses is baked in.]
Bit of an unintentional pun? :)
Oh, the old days. I miss ‘em.
Rebuilt a buddies’ 351 Cleveland (with him) and my own 429 back then.
I like these people buy “condos” in what are obviously old hotels in the rare moment when I see HGTV.
Ooh a pool and a workout facility and near the beach.
AND an HOA with fees of $250-$400-$550 or so each month, in addition.
What could possibly go wrong?
intensional ...
Awesome!
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